Asana: How does Asana compare to Trello?

It's like BMW vs. Mercedes. Taste plays a role. ;-) In a nutshell my personal view is that:

• Asana is the perfect tool for the CEO and the product manager
• Trello is the perfect tool for the team and individual team members

Been using both solutions and my findings as of January 2012 are:


Asana Pros and Cons:

Asana Pros:

• Great list management features
• You can freely add multiple tags to each item
• A singe story/task/item can have relations to multiple projects and tags
• Good keyboard shortcuts
• Few clicks until value. Easy to add new tasks without filling to many fields
• A very good email integration
• Clever Follow features throughout the system where you can follow a task or a project
• Cleaver personal Tasks view with all tasks you are assigned to within the workspace
• It's free for smaller companies

Asana Cons:

• You can only assign a story/task to one member
• Can't invite outsiders into your lists within your workspace -- you need a new workspace for it
• There is no consolidated personal view, it's always just your tasks within each workspace
• The mobile application was disappointing, as its just the HTML5 site wrapped into an App. It has limited touch usability (like to prioritize tasks and such)
• The UI is getting more clumsy with gradients and too much graphical detail that makes it slow when moving things around with the mouse
• At this writing, there is no API. It makes me worried, as it demonstrate a non-API focus of the core development (or uncertainty about how future friendly the current architecture is)
• The sub-tasks (Titles:) are very difficult to work with and can easily loose its relations when items are moved around
• No Kanban view

Trello Pros and Cons:

Trello Pros:

• A very natural human UI for the team to instantly see overall status with its Kanban list structure
• You can invite outside members to a board within the organization
• You can create closed boards with limited group of members within the organization
• You can create public boards that anyone can view
• Create multiple lists within each kanban board and color label the stories
• Can implement checklists on stories/tasks
• Assign multiple members on a story/task
• It has an API where you can extend the system
• Provides high-quality native apps on iPhone and Android
• It's free

Trello Cons:

• Cards/tasks are limited to only one Board/Project
• Limited email integration
• Limited number of Labels
• No freeform Tags
• Difficult to work with multiple cards or tasks in the UI, like for moving, copy/paste and such.
• Keyboard shortcuts and keyboard productivity usage is limited

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Keep in mind that both tools are under fast development. This list above may get outdated very fast.